The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) at NYU Shanghai opened Chronologies on September 18, a new exhibition by Singaporean artist and writer Ho Rui An, co-curated with Zian Chen.
The third season of ICA’s ongoing artistic research program Lightless Fires, the exhibition this time focuses on 19th and 20th century factory workers and students in China and Asia. Using film, sound, and archival images, Ho invites visitors to think about whose voices are heard in history and who gets to write history.
ICA Director and Curator Michelle Yeonho Hyun said the exhibition is a continuation of the questions raised in previous seasons of the Lightless Fires program. “This exhibition and its related programs offer us other ways of thinking and feeling about history, our place in it, how it is written – and how we might even try to write it ourselves,” she said.
At the center of Chronologies is the premiere of The World of Lines, a feature-length film commissioned by ICA and produced in collaboration with the Shanghai Textile Museum. The 100-minute film follows the rise and transformation of China’s textile industry in the Yangtze and Pearl River Deltas, drawing on interviews with former factory workers, family photographs, and historic film clips. These personal accounts sit alongside broader histories of industry and capitalism, offering a more layered picture of how memory and history intertwine.
Best known for his films, lectures, and writings that connect economics, culture, and politics across Asia, Ho’s work often blends research and storytelling to show how big historical shifts – industrialization, globalization, or economic reform – play out in everyday life. His works have been presented at leading international biennales in Shanghai, Bangkok, and Gwangju, South Korea, as well as major institutions such as the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and the Singapore Art Museum.
With Chronologies, he brings Shanghai’s past into dialogue with broader regional and global histories.
“Shanghai was still very much an industrial city just 30 years ago, and the cotton industry has since completely vanished,” Ho said. “Understanding that history allows us to see more clearly the kind of city we are living in today.”
Two of Ho’s earlier films are also on view in the exhibition. 24 Cinematic Points of View of a Factory Gate in China (2023) gathers a century’s worth of cinematic depictions of workers -- from early European industrial films to Soviet propaganda to Chinese socialist cinema, highlighting how labor has been framed differently across political contexts. Student Bodies (2019), by contrast, takes the form of a horror film, tracing how students have been seen as both individuals and collectives, symbols of change and moments of unrest, across East and Southeast Asia.
For Ho, history isn’t just a subject to study -- it’s a method. “One of the main reasons we seem unable to solve many of our problems today is because of the lack of a long historical perspective,” he explained. “Without really understanding the historical origins of these problems, you don’t get to the essence of what is really at work.”
Co-curator Zian Chen emphasizes that Chronologies isn’t just about presenting history, but about building a shared witness -- bringing together people whose lives intersect with the textile industry, its disappearance, and its lingering traces. Those memories are not only institutional but personal. “During our research, we realized that almost a third of our friends in Shanghai had family members who once worked in the textile industry,” he said. “That personal connection means the works often resonate with audiences in unexpected ways.”
Alongside the exhibition, ICA is hosting a series of related programs, from a screening of the 1958 documentary on Shanghai textile worker Huang Baomei to a workshop on unwritten histories of women’s experiences.
Chronologies runs through December 20, 2025, with four daily screenings of The World of Lines.